CBSE Class 12th English Exam Analysis: ‘Moderate in difficulty, but lengthy;’ students, teachers share feedback

She further added that the literature section highlighted the key themes of the prescribed texts and promoted critical thinking and interpretation. She asserted that overall, the paper was balanced and was suitable for students of varied ability levels, ensuring a fair and comprehensive assessment of learning outcomes.

Another teacher, Priyanka Yadav, PGT English, KIIT World School, Gurugram, claimed that all three sections were set at an average level of difficulty, offering a well-balanced mix of textual and competency-based questions.

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She shared that section A tested students’ reading and comprehension skills through unseen passages, which were easy to attempt, while section B included four creative writing tasks: notice writing, invitation/reply writing, letter writing, and report/article writing. The questions were clear, and sufficient hints were provided to guide the students.

“Section C was largely inference-based. The Reference to Context (RTC) questions in the Literature section followed the format outlined in the CBSE Sample Paper. The long-answer questions interlinked narratives from different chapters and poems, encouraging deeper textual understanding,” she said, adding that overall, the paper did not include many direct questions; instead, it focused more on inference- and application-based understanding.

Alka Kapur, who is the principal of the Modern Public School, Shalimar Bagh, said that the exam was a well-balanced paper that effectively assessed students’ understanding of the subject. “The MCQs were truly competency-based, testing students’ comprehension and application skills rather than simple recall,” she said, adding that most of the questions were analytical in nature, encouraging students to think critically and interpret the content carefully.

Sreelekha Sarcar, an Educator at the Shiv Nadar School, Gurgaon, claims that “the paper was moderate in difficulty but relatively lengthy. While sections like writing skills and most short-answer questions were easy to attempt, one of the prose RTC passages was unusually long and required considerable reading time, while a few questions demanded careful analysis.”

He also added that some of the MCQs were tricky as they referred to ideas not explicitly mentioned in the extracts.

Neelam Singh, PGT English at Manav Rachna International School, Faridabad, said, “The paper assessed a range of skills, including comprehension, writing ability, interpretation, and analytical thinking. Overall, the level of the paper may be placed between moderate and difficult, primarily due to the analytical demands of certain sections and the overall length of the question paper.”